Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2010, Side 129

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Two Changes in Faroese
^he general picture with regard to analytic constructions indicates that
the oldest speakers are slightly more tolerant with regard to geva ‘give’
DO+PP. Table 3 also showed that the DO+PP construction was most
widely accepted when the NP in the PP was inanimate: geva kl&ðini til
^relsunarberin ‘give the clothes to the Salvation Army’. In addition, both
the grammatical judgment tests and the database search show that
IO+DO is still very much alive.
3-3 Analytic vs. synthetic comparison
Another change we observe in Faroese is that from a synthetic compara-
hve and superlative to an analytical comparative and superlative, very
much the same as the changes observed in English and in the Mainland-
hcandinavian languages. I will give examples and concrete figures demon-
strating this below. We did not include superlatives such as mestframsíg-
‘most visionary’ in the 2008 NORMS fieldwork, but I searched for
relevant constructions in F0royskt TekstaSavn and FAE—SOSIALURIN
f°r the sake of illustration.
In Höskuldur Thráinsson et al. (2004:109) it is claimed that compari-
s°n with meira ‘more’ and mest ‘most’ is increasing in Faroese and that
fhis is the only option with indeclinable adjectives, e.g. meira ótolandi
more intolerable’ (Höskuldur Thráinsson et al. 2004:112). This is in
^ccordance with my findings. I searched for four types of adjectives in the
atabases at hand: indeclinable adjectives ending in -andi (ótolandi ‘intol-
or+ble’), adjectives derived with the suffix -lig (like nágreiniligur ‘careful’),
orrowed adjectives such as positivur ‘positive’, and compounded adjec-
hves like ídnaðarframleiddur, literally ‘industry-produced’. One reason
°r choosing the derived and compounded adjectives is that such adjec-
tlyes usually have analytic comparatives in Norwegian, a language more
V Vanced than Faroese on its way towards analyticity (cf. Faarlund, Lie,
vannebo i997:358ff). The reason for choosing loanwords is that we can
assume that Danish comparative constructions like mere nerv0s ‘more ner-
v°us could be borrowed as a whole into Faroese as meira nerv0sur. The
Same may have happened in Icelandic from time to time, witness the fact
/pat sPeakers of Icelandic have come to accept meira nervös ‘more nervous’
míkur Rögnvaldsson, p.c.). But if Modern Faroese in behaves like
e andic (for the most part, and as older Faroese), we should expect to
^ synthetic constructions with adjectives that are inherited from Old
°rse (cognates), and even with compounds and derived adjectives.